UK Tariffs Face Uncertainty as US Courts Strike Down Trump Trade Powers But Protectionism Remains
Welcome back to United Kingdom Tariff News and Tracker.
The big story for UK-focused trade this week is legal and political turbulence in Washington that could reshape how tariffs on British goods are imposed.
According to the law firm Baker Botts’ “Trump Tariff Tracker” update on May 8, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that President Trump’s 10 percent global tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 were unlawful. The judges said that authority is tightly limited to addressing “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments crises, not ordinary trade deficits. That matters for the United Kingdom because it narrows one of the main legal tools the administration had been using to layer additional duties on allies without going back to Congress.
At the same time, a separate Supreme Court decision, reported in a recent “This Is America” segment on YouTube, struck down many of Trump’s emergency tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Court held that the administration had overreached, forcing the federal government to begin refunding tens of billions of dollars in duties to importers. However, Trump has publicly insisted that “all of those tariffs remain,” and advisers have signaled they are pivoting to other statutes, including Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, Section 301, and the same Section 122 that is now under fire in the trade court.
For the United Kingdom specifically, current U.S. tariff policy is a mix of caps, exceptions, and threats.
Logistics provider Dimerco’s 2026 U.S. tariff update notes that Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum have been doubled to 50 percent on many imports, but the United Kingdom enjoys a preferential cap: combined U.S. tariffs, including normal MFN duties, are capped at 10 percent for certain metal products. There is also a carve‑out for specific aerospace-related steel products from the UK, highlighted in Baker Botts’ May tariff tracker, which exempts those items from the higher global steel duties.
On the downside, Baker Botts also points to an ad valorem duty targeting imports from the United Kingdom in retaliation for the UK’s digital services tax. While exact rates vary by product, the policy is designed to pressure London to modify or roll back its tax on large U.S. tech firms, and it sits alongside similar measures aimed at several European countries.
Another pressure point is geopolitics. Both Baker Botts and Dimerco flag that the U.S. has proposed or adopted discretionary tariffs of up to 25 percent on countries “doing business” with Iran and 100 percent “secondary tariffs” on those that do business with Russia. Any future U.S. determination that the UK’s dealings with those countries are out of step with Washington’s sanctions policy could put British exports at risk, even though the UK is a core U.S. ally.
Finally, trade analysts at Yale’s Budget Lab, in an April 8 overview of the U.S. tariff system, estimate that the current tariff mix, even assuming some contested measures expire, would raise about 1.3 trillion dollars over ten years. That fiscal incentive gives any administration, including Trump’s, a strong reason to keep tariffs in place or re‑justify them under new legal theories, even as courts strike down the old ones.
For UK businesses, the message today is clear: the legal ground under U.S. tariff policy is shifting, but the overall direction remains protectionist. Preferential caps and sector‑specific exemptions offer some relief, yet retaliatory duties linked to digital taxes and geopolitical disputes continue to hang over the trans‑Atlantic trade relationship.
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